Hillary rising and just how big a wimp is Obama?

Yesterday Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced the transfer of military no fly operations in Libya from the United States to NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization).

Say what?

How come President Barack Obama didn't make the announcement himself?  Or if the president delegated the announcement shouldn't it have been to Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, especially since it was basically a military issue?

Or was Obama placating his women hawks featuring Hillary Clinton at the expense of his men doves featuring Robert Gates?  Obama had already acceded to Hillary Clinton's wishes and ignored those of Gates.

This is more than a simple point of protocol.  Did Hillary Clinton take this upon herself?  Unlikely.  But it's still alarming given that Hillary Clinton is the least qualified Secretary of State since World War II.

There are two qualifications for any cabinet position: executive experience and subject matter knowledge and experience.  Hillary Clinton was zero for two.  No, being married to the president and making trips to foreign countries does not count as foreign policy experience.  Nor does being a U.S. Senator.  The last Senator to be Secretary of State was Edmund Muskie and he was a late term fill in during the failed term of Jimmy Carter after Cyrus Vance had resigned in protest over Carter's failed rescue attempt of the Americans being held hostage in Iran.  Even Muskie had been a governor.

The closest thing to executive experience that Hillary Clinton had prior to being named Secretary of State was heading her can't lose presidential campaign in 2008, which was mismanaged into snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

In her brief time as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton presided over the most enormous leaking of secret government documents (to wiki leaks) and has yet to be taken to account.  Why is that?

Here's a trip down memory lane of Secretaries of State past and their qualifications.  Read this and you'll see how pathetic Hillary Clinton's credentials were.

Condoleezza Rice January 26, 2005 – January 20, 2009: President George W. Bush's National Security Advisor during his first term; President George H.W. Bush's  Senior Director, of Soviet and East European Affairs in the National Security Council, and a Special Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs.

Colin Powell January 20, 2001 – January 26, 2005: retired four-star general in the United States Army; National Security Advisor; Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Madeleine Albright January 23, 1997 – January 20, 2001: fluent in English, French, Russian, and Czech; she speaks and reads Polish and Serbo-Croatian; U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations; Carter's National Security Council’s congressional liaison; academic staff at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., specializing in Eastern European studies.

Warren Christopher January 20, 1993 – January 17, 1997:  Deputy Attorney General in the Lyndon Johnson administration: Deputy Secretary of State in the Jimmy Carter administration negotiating the Algiers Accords, and securing the release of 52 American hostages in Iran. He also spearheaded the Sino-American relations with the People's Republic of China, helped to win ratification of the Panama Canal treaties, and headed the first interagency group on human rights. President Jimmy Carter awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian award, on January 16, 1981.

Lawrence Eagleburger December 8, 1992 – January 20, 1993: career diplomat; joined the US Foreign Service in 1957, and served in various posts in embassies, consulates, and the State Department.

James Baker January 20, 1989 – August 23, 1992: Secretary of the Treasury from 1985-1988; Chief of Staff for Reagan and Bush the elder; served on the Economic Policy Council and National Security Council.

George P. Shultz July 16, 1982 – January 20, 1989: Secretary of Labor from 1969 to 1970; Secretary of the Treasury from 1972 to 1974; professor of economics at MIT and the University of Chicago, serving as Dean of the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business from 1962 to 1969;  1974 to 1982, Shultz was an executive at Bechtel, eventually becoming the firm's president.

Alexander Haig January 22, 1981 – July 5, 1982: United States Army general who served as White House Chief of Staff under Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford; Vice Chief of Staff of the Army, the second-highest ranking officer in the Army, and as Supreme Allied Commander Europe commanding all U.S. and NATO forces in Europe.

Edmund Muskie May 8, 1980 – January 20, 1981:  governor of Maine from 1955 to 1959, United States Senator from 1959 to 1980; Democratic nominee for Vice President in the 1968;  Maine House of Representatives.

Cyrus Vance January 20, 1977 – April 28, 1980: Secretary of the Army and the Deputy Secretary of Defense.

Henry Kissinger September 22, 1973 – January 20, 1977: Nobel Peace Prize; National Security Advisor; consultant to the Director of the Psychological Strategy Board;  doctoral dissertation was titled "Peace, Legitimacy, and the Equilibrium (A Study of the Statesmanship of Castlereagh and Metternich)."; Director of the Harvard Defense Studies Program between 1958 and 1971 and Director of the Harvard International Seminar between 1951 and 1971; consultant to several government agencies, including the Operations Research Office, the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, and the Department of State, and the Rand Corporation; U.S. Army Sergeant: volunteered for hazardous intelligence duties during the Battle of the Bulge; awarded the Bronze Star; taught at the European Command Intelligence School.

William P. Rogers January 22, 1969 – September 3, 1973:  Attorney General from 1957 to 1961; U.S. Navy lieutenant commander in WWII.

Dean Rusk January 21, 1961 – January 20, 1969 (second-longest serving U.S. Secretary of State of all time, behind only Cordell Hull): World War II Army infantry reserve captain;  work briefly for the War Department in Washington. Joined the State Department in February 1945, and worked for the office of United Nations Affairs;  Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs in 1950; president of the  Rockefeller Foundation.

Christian Herter April 22, 1959 – January 20, 1961:  governor of Massachusetts from 1953 to 1956; born in Paris, France; attaché to the U.S. Embassy in Berlin;  part of the U.S. delegation to the 1919 Paris Peace Conference; Commerce Secretary; Massachusetts House of Representatives; United States House of Representatives; founded the Middle East Institute; served on the board of trustees of the World Peace Foundation.

John Foster Dulles January 26, 1953 – April 22, 1959: Both his grandfather, John W. Foster, and his uncle, Robert Lansing, served as Secretary of State; legal counsel to the United States delegation to the Versailles Peace Conference; member of the War Reparations Committee; participated in the San Francisco Conference and worked as adviser to Senator Arthur H. Vandenberg and helped draft the preamble to the United Nations Charter. He subsequently attended the United Nations General Assembly as a United States delegate in 1946, 1947 and 1950; appointed by New York Governor Dewey to the United States Senate July 7, 1949, to November 8, 1949; In 1950, Dulles published War or Peace, a critical analysis of the American policy of containment.

Dean Acheson January 21, 1949 – January 20, 1953: Undersecretary of the United States Treasury;  1939-1940 he headed a committee to study the operation of administrative bureaus in the federal government; assistant secretary of state in 1941; implemented the Lend-Lease policy that helped re-arm Great Britain and the American/British/Dutch oil embargo that cut off 95 percent of Japanese oil supplies and escalated the crisis with Japan in 1941; attended the Bretton Woods Conference (the birthplace of the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, the last of which would evolve into the World Trade Organization.) as the head delegate from the State department; Undersecretary of of State.

George Marshall January 21, 1947 – January 20, 1949:  Chief of Staff of the Army; third Secretary of Defense.

James F. Byrnes July 3, 1945 – January 21, 1947: U.S. House of Representatives (1911–1925), U.S. Senator (1931–1941), Justice of the Supreme Court (1941–1942); headed Roosevelt's Economic Stabilization Office;  also headed of the Office of War Mobilization; attended Yalta Conference in early 1945; close advisor to President Truman.

So where would you rank Hillary Clinton among these people as far as credentials to be Secretary of State prior to being appointed?  Last if you're even a little bit objective.  That's why it's alarming that Obama would let her infringe upon his responsibilities or those of the Secretary of Defense.